The murky state of the Republican presidential race, in two graphs

A new poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News reinforces the new state of the Republican race: Donald Trump and Ben Carson running neck-and-neck, with Jeb Bush still far behind.

Both Trump and Carson are up since the last WSJ/NBC poll in September, Trump up more than Carson. (Trump's polling average lead is now 2.6 points, if you were wondering.) Since June, they're both up dramatically -- while Bush sees his first increase, however slight, since April.

If you add bars representing the margin of error, though, the picture muddies a bit. Objects at the front of the pack may be closer than they appear.

That's not good news for Trump. What's worse is that far more people have Ben Carson as their second choice. If you add the first and second choices together, Carson passes Trump, 44-39.

But there is better news elsewhere. The survey also asked voters who they could see themselves supporting. For the first time since they started asking, Bush trails Trump and Carson on that metric. In other words, more Republicans could see settling for Trump than settling for Bush.

The other important thing to take away from this new survey: Those lines move around a lot. What the field will look like by the November WSJ/NBC poll is anyone's guess.

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